Caregiver Resources

Before the pandemic, the UK was spending only 9.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, which is one of the lowest in the developed world, and only had a bed capacity of 2.5 per 1,000 people (Maizland and Felter, 2020). Thus, when the pandemic hit, NHS frontline services were rapidly overwhelmed. They responded by postponing nonemergency procedures, closing nonemergency services, and redeploying specialists, which released necessary hospital beds. Unfortunately, these actions had negative consequences for older people and their carers.

Being an unpaid caregiver isn’t something that you plan or prepare for, so when my mother was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND), a non-curable, life-limiting, neurodegenerative condition, it was like entering into the abyss of the unknown, but knowing the devastating and inevitable outcome.